It was as if she had fallen in love with an inhabitant of another planet:  the worlds they respectively belonged to were so far apart She loved him—­she loved him—­and she knew her love was hopeless, and she could not bear it.  Oh, yes; she met him sometimes, here and there, at houses she went to to play, to give lessons.  He was civil to her:  he was more than civil—­he was kind; he talked to her about literature and music.  ’He is so gentle, so strong, so wise; but he has never thought of me as a woman—­a woman who could love, who could be loved.  Why should he?  If the moth falls in love with the star, the moth must suffer....  I am cowardly; I am weak; I am what you will; but I have more than I can bear.  Life is too hard—­too hard.  To-morrow I shall be dead.  You will be the only person to know why I died, and you will keep my secret.’

‘Oh, the pity of it—­the pity of it!’ murmured Mrs. Kempton.  ’I wonder whether I ought to have shown him Mary’s letter.’

WHEN I AM KING

‘Qu’y faire, mon Dieu, qu’y faire?’

I had wandered into a tangle of slummy streets, and began to think it time to inquire my way back to the hotel:  then, turning a corner, I came out upon the quays.  At one hand there was the open night, with the dim forms of many ships, and stars hanging in a web of masts and cordage; at the other, the garish illumination of a row of public-houses:  Au Bonheur du Matelot, Cafe de la Marine, Brasserie des Quatre Vents, and so forth; rowdy-looking shops enough, designed for the entertainment of the forecastle.  But they seemed to promise something in the nature of local colour; and I entered the Brasserie des Quatre Vents.

It proved to be a brasserie-a-femmes; you were waited upon by ladies, lavishly rouged and in regardless toilets, who would sit with you and chat, and partake of refreshments at your expense.  The front part of the room was filled up with tables, where half a hundred customers, talking at the top of their voices, raised a horrid din—­sailors, soldiers, a few who might be clerks or tradesmen, and an occasional workman in his blouse.  Beyond, there was a cleared space, reserved for dancing, occupied by a dozen couples, clumsily toeing it; and on a platform, at the far end, a man pounded a piano.  All this in an atmosphere hot as a furnace-blast, and poisonous with the fumes of gas, the smells of bad tobacco, of musk, alcohol, and humanity.

The musician faced away from the company, so that only his shoulders and the back of his grey head were visible, bent over his keyboard.  It was sad to see a grey head in that situation; and one wondered what had brought it there, what story of vice or weakness or evil fortune.  Though his instrument was harsh, and he had to bang it violently to be heard above the roar of conversation, the man played with a kind of cleverness, and with certain fugitive suggestions